Law of Video Game Characters Pt. 1 (Issues w/F.E.A.R.)

There is a wacky little side bar on page 72 of the September 2006 issue of Game Informer. In previewing the upcoming Xbox 360 release of the critically acclaimed PC game F.E.A.R., the editors noted that developer Monolith Productions Interactive will be cutting collaborative ties with publisher Vivendi prior to the launch of F.E.A.R. in November 2006. As Monolith ramps up to immerse itself in more publishing as Warner Bros. Interactive, they are now a major rival with Vivendi. Questions arise now as to what this will mean for the F.E.A.R. franchise since there is a unique arrangement between the two companies regarding ownership of IP in the game.

Ordinarilly a publisher owns all the rights to a game, leaving them free to use different developers for future titles of a franchise. Here, developer Monolith apparently retained the rights to all of the characters in F.E.A.R., while publisher Vivendi only maintained control of the name or brand identifier, as well as, the fictional universe where the story takes place. The demand for future F.E.A.R. is more than likely to explode with its introduction on the next generation of gaming consoles, but how can either company advance the franchise w/o infringing on the other's rights?

This boils down to fundamental questions of both storytelling and copyright/trademark law. For starters, it becomes pertinent to determine whether the characters can operate outside of the established universe of F.E.A.R. How much does their delineation depend on the chronology established by the universe, and do they retain any value when taken out of it? Also, we must determine how well these characters can operate independently of the F.E.A.R. universe established in previous games. Are their powers and capabilities self contained, or rather enabled by the environment around them?

Next, we must determine how well a F.E.A.R. universe can work w/o the major characters introduced. Namely, if the rules established by the universe in the F.E.A.R. series can lend themselves to scenarios entirely devoid of the history established by former characters, then the job for Vivendi will be easy. Just introduce new characters, forget about the past and continue making hit games. If however, the future of F.E.A.R. and the rules of the universe themselves are dependent upon a particular character in the previous games, then the Is it in the characters or the universe/plotline? In answering these questions let's look at the dichotomy between a franchise driven by its characters and a franchise driven by its universe.

Think of a franchise driven by the characters as your Jesus Line. The entire story of the Christian faith and its subsequent works depend on the centrality of one figure: Jesus. Without that character the rest of the universe built around his life and death does not make sense. Compare this to what we will call the Star Trek Line. This strength in this franchise is the voyaging and exploration of the universes by different races. Even though there are important and delineated characters in earlier Star Trek chronologies, what Captain Picard does with his Starship Enterprise is not dependent on what Captain Kirk did with his. Plus this the Star Trek Line is valued by the brand recognition of the term Star Trek (hence should F.E.A.R. fall into this Line then Vivendi should have no problems).

I will end this installment here, primarily because of my unfamiliarity with the F.E.A.R. franchise. If in the near future, I rent it for Xbox 360 and have a chance to play it, I will be in a better position to analyze the copyright issues and story elements that we have discussed here.
Hopefully this evaluation won't be too far off.